Report of subsidies to dead farmers debunked

Sunday, April 3, 2011

The General Accountability Office, the auditing and investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, caused a stir in 2007 when it reported that as much as US$1.1 billion annually was being improperly paid to dead farmers. That's out of about $20 billion for crop subsidies, conservation practices and disasters.

But, according to Associated Press, a subsequent report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency says that just isn't so. Matching payments to social security death records revealed that 121,527 payments totalling $108 million in 2007 went to people who had died. The agency found that, in nearly every case, the dead farmers' estates and other entities were legally entitled to the money because the subsidies had been applied for before the death.

A USDA study of subsidy payments in 2009 showed that just $1.22 million went out in error, out of $16.6 billion. The agency says it cut its error rate to 0.008 per cent from two per cent in one year. BF